How to Fix Premiere Pro Text Not Showing on Mac

When Premiere Pro text won't show on a Mac, the macOS font database is usually corrupted, so Premiere can't draw some text or find some installed font weights. Clear the font database in Terminal with atsutil, restart the font server, and your text comes back.

This fix is for macOS only. It covers a few symptoms that all come from the same broken font cache:

• Point text doesn't appear on screen.
• Paragraph text only shows once the text box is completely full.
• Subtitle tracks don't show in your projects, even though the same projects look fine on other computers.
• Some font weights you installed don't show up in the font menu.

How to clear the font database on your Mac

1. Close every app. Quit Premiere Pro and anything else you have open so you don't lose unsaved work.

2. Open Terminal. Press Command + Space, type Terminal and press Return.

3. Clear the font databases. Paste this command and press Return. It clears the font databases for the whole system and for your user account:

   sudo atsutil databases -remove

4. Enter your password. Type your Mac's admin password and press Return. Nothing shows on screen while you type. That's normal.

5. Shut down the font server. Paste this and press Return:

   atsutil server -shutdown

6. Start the font server again. Paste this and press Return:

   atsutil server -ping

7. Reopen Premiere Pro. Open your project and check your point text, your text boxes, your subtitle tracks and the font menu.

The first time you open Premiere after this, it can take a little longer to load while macOS rebuilds the font list.

Skip the preferences reset and Safe Mode

You'll find a lot of advice to uninstall Premiere, delete your Adobe preferences or boot into Safe Mode to clear font caches. The editor who hit this bug on a 2024 M4 MacBook Pro tried all of that first and nothing changed. The Terminal commands above fixed it, so start there.

If you need your captions to look good fast after you get Premiere working again, here's a sample of what styled, word-synced captions look like:

Sycamore adds animated captions like these to your video automatically, so you don't have to build and time every text layer by hand in Premiere.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my text only show when the text box is full?

A broken macOS font database can stop Premiere from drawing point text or text in a box with empty space left. Clearing the font database in Terminal and restarting the font server fixes it.

My project's subtitles show on another computer but not on my Mac. Is the project broken?

No. If the same project shows subtitles fine on other machines, the problem sits on your Mac. Clear the font database with the steps above and reopen the project.

I already reset my Adobe preferences and booted in Safe Mode. Will this still help?

Yes. Removing Adobe preferences and booting in Safe Mode didn't fix it for the editor who hit this, but the atsutil commands did.

If Premiere is giving you other trouble on Mac, see how to fix RED footage glitches and export stalls in Premiere Pro and fixes for recovered clips, frozen bins and Project Manager bugs.